Dictionaries define ‘femininity’ as: “(1) the quality or nature of the female sex; womanliness; (2) the female form; (3) the sum of all attributes that convey (or are perceived to convey) womanhood.”
So whatever happened to femininity as a social value? Perhaps that question was already answered over a century ago. It would be difficult to believe that when British writer Arabella Kenealy published her book Feminism and Sex-Extinction in 1920, she could possibly have envisaged the 2025 dystopian reality of her predictions.
“Feminism, the extremist – and of late years the predominant cult of the Woman’s Movement, is Masculinism,” she asserted.
“It makes for such training and development in woman, of male characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political, industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her womanhood; even to her mother-function. It repudiates all privileges for her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights, political and social, identical education and training, identical economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and public.
“(The Feminist Creed) calls for the elimination of sex differences and the abolition of sex distinctions in every department of life and activity.
“Contrary to Feminist doctrine, the division of Labour into two sexes, so to speak, is as natural and is as indispensable to Human Progress as is the division of Life into two sexes.”
A modern illustration of these truths was recently provided by on-line blogger Christine Grace Smith. After reviewing commentaries about, and scenes from, a ‘Survivor’ TV series featuring the behaviors of men and women struggling for survival on separate islands, she observed: “Gender stereotypes are not a construct; they are real gender differences based on principles of survival. We need men.”
Today, in 2025, Kenealy’s 1920 prescription for proper gender roles would certainly not be considered by feminists and the Left as being progressive:
“For Progress, man must be always the leading half and controller in politics and civic affairs. These are his province. His sex stands for permanence and conformity – and, accordingly, for uniformity. And uniformity is the model for Civilisation, making as it does for Justice and the Common Good.
“All of our civilisation, with its complex sociological, intellectual, and moral developments, rests on a basis of Force. Men must still prove their right to each and all of their laboriously-won achievements by arms and the valours of war. In peace, the laws – which alone make life tolerable – rest equally upon the powers of masculine will and strength to inflict due punishment for violation thereof.
“Woman’s non-conformity adapts her admirable to the personal relations of life, but not to the political. Man builds institutions and administers them by more or less rigid impersonal rule. Woman transforms them into homes, and humanises them by individual concessions and exceptions.
“So the two are supplement and complement in the public as in the natural sphere. But their respective roles are contrary in every mode and issue.”
In the end, it would appear that most of the controversy and conflict around sex and gender differences has been counterproductive for both sexes. To see the controversy in a way that’s Just Right is to view the real conflict as one about independence, leadership, productivity, creativity, love, and human survival itself.
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